Tymoshenko misses Ukraine premiership in narrow, contested vote

Dec 11 2007, 16:30
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday failed to approve Orange Revolution heroine Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister in votes that her supporters immediately charged were technically flawed.
Tymoshenko was nominated by President Viktor Yushchenko, but received only 225 votes in each of two rounds of voting in the Verkhovna Rada, one vote short of the absolute majority needed. However, her supporters alleged that the machine tabulating the votes had been tampered with.
"It's not the lawmakers that malfunctioned, it's the machine. It was programmed for 225 votes," said Volodymyr Silenko, a parliament member from Tymoshenko's party.
The dispute over the vote count adds a new exacerbating element to Ukraine's chronically chaotic politics.
After the second disputed vote, the parliament went into recess and members of the anti-Tymoshenko Party of Regions, which has the largest contingent in parliament, blockaded the parliament's rostrum in an attempt to prevent the session from reconvening.
Although the pro-Russian Party of Regions, led by the previous prime minister Viktor Yanukovych, has the largest number of seats, the parties of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko together obtained a narrow majority of the seats in September's national elections.
Tymoshenko and the president have often locked horns in the past - he dismissed her as prime minister in 2005 after she had served only seven months - but agreed to form a majority coalition on the understanding that she would be nominated to return to the premier's post.
Tymoshenko is one of the most polarizing figures in Ukrainian politics. Her backers have intense loyalty to her, especially after the 2004 Orange Revolution protests in which she was the driving figure. Others either despise her or are uncomfortable with her fiery oratory and intense personal ambition.
The Orange Revolution protests broke out after a fraud-plagued presidential election in which Yanukovych tallied the most votes. Amid weeks of round-the-clock demonstrations in Kiev, a court nullified the election and ordered a rerun, which the reformist, Western-oriented Yushchenko won.
But Yushchenko's star quickly dimmed as his government became mired in factional squabbling. Yanukovych, who was prime minister at the time of the Orange Revolution, returned to the post after the 2006 parliamentary elections that brought his party the biggest share of votes. This spring, Yushchenko alleged that Yanukovych and his backers were trying to unconstitutionally usurp power and he ordered the parliament dissolved. That led to weeks of high tension and fears that violence would break out in a dispute over which side controlled Interior Ministry forces.